uld be in the negative. The old notion that all women
were domestic and would enjoy housework if only they could do it in
their own homes is indeed exploded. The natural differences among
women are now allowed. The advantages, social, economic, and in
matters of health and control of work-time and of leisure, which the
average housemother enjoys over the average woman who works at manual
labor under the factory system of industry, were, however, never
better known or more justly evaluated. The proof of this is in the
inclusion of training in household arts by the Smith-Hughes Bill,
under which the Federal Government makes large appropriations for
vocational training directly aimed at improving the efficiency of
women whose labor is confined to the private home.

It is a sign, among other things, of desired and needed flexibility in
domestic arrangements that there were listed in 1910 as married
twenty-five per cent. of the women at work in "gainful occupations."
Not all the conditions indicated by this count were socially helpful;
since in the textile industries, in which many married women are
employed, there are fewer children born and more die before the end of
the second year than in the average population. It does, however,
indicate that among those of higher opportunity in life there is a
growing disposition to treat the question of women's continuance in
vocational service outside the home after marriage as a real problem
and one to be settled in freedom, and with social approval of that
freedom, by the two persons most deeply concerned. Only, it must be
insisted, that all a married woman gains in salary or wages cannot be
reckoned as increase of the family income. The economic value of the
average housemother's contribution is now definitely computed and must
be reckoned hereafter as so much actually contributed to the family
income. And so far, if a woman is physically able, temperamentally
adjustable, and adequately trained for household tasks, she can in the
vast majority of cases serve her day and generation in no better
fashion than by assuming and carrying the multiple duties of the
private home.

Hence, although freedom means new choice, prudence and affection alike
oftenest point to the old paths of family service for the average
woman. As Mrs. Abel well says of the competent housemother who chooses
full and personal service to the home and the family, "At her best she
represents individual effort full